How to self reference a function? - function

Below code in python:
def print_all(x):
print(x)
return print_all
allows to call print_all(1)(2) or print_all(1)(2)(3)(4)
Edit
Another example in python:
def print_sums(x):
print(x)
def next_sum(y):
return print_sums(x+y)
return next_sum
print_sums(1)(3)(5)
which maps to syntax:
package main
import "fmt"
type printsumfunctype func(x int) printsumfunctype
func printSums(x int) printsumfunctype {
fmt.Println(x)
var nextSum func(y int) printsumfunctype
nextSum = func(y int) printsumfunctype {
return printSums(x + y)
}
return nextSum
}
func main() {
printSums(1)(2)(3)
}
In GoLang, function is first class
1) What is the syntax to self reference a function in GoLang?
2) What is the preferred naming convention to define types like printsumfunctype?

You define a recursive function type:
type Printer func(interface{}) Printer
func printAll(x interface{}) Printer {
fmt.Println(x)
return printAll
}
func main() {
printAll(1)("Hello")
}
For the new code, you would write
type Sink func(int) Sink // not really different, is it?
func printSums(x int) Sink {
fmt.Println(x)
return func(y int) Sink {
return printSums(x + y)
}
}
A useful naming convention is to just name the types after their functions. In both of these cases, Printer (basically function verb + "er") works. Or, the more generic term Sink also fits, as it's a black hole that you can just keep dumping items into. I don't think there's any rule for it; these types aren't very common. Just pick a descriptive name.

Related

Can functions with interfaces be passed as parameters?

I know that functions can be passed as parameters. But I would like to use a function taking a type implementing an interface as input to a function. Is this still possible?
I have tried the following and it gives cannot use myfn1 (type func(int)) as type fn in argument to test as error.
package main
import "fmt"
type intf interface{}
type fn func(i intf)
func myfn1(i int) {
fmt.Printf("\ni is %v", i)
}
func myfn2(i int) {
fmt.Printf("\ni is %v", i)
}
func test(f fn, val int) {
f(val)
}
func main() {
test(fn(myfn1), 123)
test(myfn2, 321)
}
You can try it at: https://play.golang.org/p/Al7USxzmYST
Changing type fn func(i intf) to type fn func(i int) of course solves the issue. But I don't understand whether it can be made to work with the interface.
You can pass any type of function as an argument. However, when you pass a function as an argument, the function signature has to match. So you cannot pass a function taking an interface in place of a function that takes an int.
Passing an interface value to a function is different than passing an int. When you call a function with an int value, it simply passes that value. But when you pass a int value to a function getting interface{}, it has to create an interface value containing the type of the value and the value itself, and pass that.

Declare function with type alias in Golang

Is it possible to do something like this in Golang?
package main
import "fmt"
type myFunType func(x int) int
var myFun myFunType = myFunType { return x } // (1)
func doSomething(f myFunType) {
fmt.Println(f(10))
}
func main() {
doSomething(myFun)
}
In other words, is it possible to declare a function type variable using a function type alias, without repeating the signature?
Or, alternatively, is there a way not to always retype the whole function-signature, whenever creating a variable of a function-type?
The above code sample, which I would expect to be equivalent to the one below (replace line (1) with line (2)), results in the compilation error syntax error: unexpected return, expecting expression.
package main
import "fmt"
type myFunType func(x int) int
var myFun myFunType = func(x int) int { return 2 * x } // (2)
func doSomething(f myFunType) {
fmt.Println(f(10))
}
func main() {
doSomething(myFun)
}
From Spec: Function literals:
FunctionLit = "func" Signature FunctionBody .
A function literal must contain the func keyword and the Signature. Using a function type is not allowed by the syntax.
Same goes for Function declarations:
FunctionDecl = "func" FunctionName Signature [ FunctionBody ] .
Using a function type (instead of the signature) is not allowed.
So no, what you want is not possible. And the reason for it is because the signature (the function type) does not include the parameter names (just their order and types), but when you are actually "creating" a function value, you need a way to refer to them, and having just the function type you don't have names for the parameters.
See related questions for more details:
Getting method parameter names in Golang
Is unnamed arguments a thing in Go?
No, but in golang you can define methods with a name and use them.
As an example. Sometimes at the top of a file or even in a whole package there is a common way of defining errors like this:
ErrFileNotFound := func(file string) error { return errors.New(fmt.Sprintf("file not found %v", file)) }
And this function can then be used multiple times in the file like
file, err := os.Open(filenameRequestedToOpen) // For read access.
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(ErrFileNotFound(filenameRequestedToOpen))
}
or see https://play.golang.org/p/CvBGGc3YeX4
var myFun myFunType = func(x int) int { return 2 * x } // (2)
this is ok, myFun must contains func keyword,means it's a func type of myFunType, and parameters and return type must same with myFunType declared.

How to add multiple values returned by a function directly

I have the following code.
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
a := 0
b := 0
a, b += getValues()
fmt.Println(a, b)
}
func getValues() (a int, b int) {
a = 0
b = 5
return
}
I want to directly add the multiple values returned by a function. I just want to if there is a provision like this in Go.
When I run the above code, I get the following error.
syntax error: unexpected +=, expecting := or = or comma
You can use a helper method which takes a variadic number of parameters and just returns the slice created from the params
func aggregator(res ...interface{}) []interface{}{
return res
}
If you want to escape the extra type assertion you can set the type you want to work with, in your case int, for the input and output parameters of the helper function. But here is an example using interface{}:
func main() {
fmt.Printf("%d, %d", aggregator(f())[0].(int), aggregator(f())[1].(int))
}
func aggregator(res ...interface{}) []interface{}{
return res
}
func f () (int, int) {
return 1,2
}
Go Playground.

Dynamically create variables of certain type based on string in Go

Simple version
How can you create a variable of a certain type based upon the value of a string?
type ta struct { a int }
type tb struct { b float }
type tc struct { c string }
t := "tb"
v := MagicVarFunc(t) // Returns a new allocated var of type interface{}
v.(tb).b = 8.3
The true example
In my, surprisingly enough, working example below, I am dynamically creating variables based on a string. This is done by registering each struct type in a map with the string being the key and a nil-pointer of the type being the value.
Each type implements an interface with the method New() which returns a new variable of that specific type.
The example below is very close to what I wish to do, where each action has a set of JSON encoded data which will populate the corresponding struct. The way I've structured it is also because I wish to be able to create new stand alone actions that I register to the map.
I am not sure if am abusing the language now.
May anyone give me any pointers if I am completely out of my mind? Is there an obviously easier way?
package main
import (
"fmt"
"encoding/json"
)
// All I require of an action is that it may be executed
type ActionHandler interface {
Exec()
New() ActionHandler
}
// My list of actions
var mActions = make(map[string]ActionHandler)
// Action Exit (leaving the program)
type aExit struct {}
func (s *aExit) Exec() { fmt.Println("Good bye") }
func (s *aExit) New() ActionHandler { return new(aExit) }
func init() {
var a *aExit
mActions[`exit`] = a
}
// Action Say (say a message to someone)
type aSay struct {
To string
Msg string
}
func (s *aSay) Exec() { fmt.Println(`You say, "` + s.Msg + `" to ` + s.To) }
func (s *aSay) New() ActionHandler { return new(aSay) }
func init() {
var a *aSay
mActions[`say`] = a
}
func inHandler(action string, data []byte) {
a := mActions[action].New()
json.Unmarshal(data, &a)
a.Exec()
}
func main(){
inHandler(`say`, []byte(`{"to":"Sonia","msg":"Please help me!"}`))
inHandler(`exit`, []byte(`{}`))
}
You can use reflection to get the zero value of, or to allocate a new value (like new) of a type using reflection, if you can get the Type value at runtime. However, I don't think there is a way to get the Type from a string. You would need to have a value of that type to get the type itself.
I adopted your idea, of using a map. I map the string to the type itself, which you can get using reflect.TypeOf, which gets the type out of an interface value. Then I used reflect.Zero to get the zero value of that type (a convenient value that exists for every type). Then I got the value out as an interface.
package main
import "reflect"
type ta struct { a int }
type tb struct { b float64 }
type tc struct { c string }
var mActions map[string]reflect.Type = make(map[string]reflect.Type)
func init() {
var a ta
mActions[`ta`] = reflect.TypeOf(a)
var b tb
mActions[`tb`] = reflect.TypeOf(b)
var c ta
mActions[`tc`] = reflect.TypeOf(c)
}
func MagicVarFunc(action string) interface{} {
return reflect.Zero(mActions[action]).Interface()
}
func main() {
t := "tb"
v := MagicVarFunc(t) // Returns a new allocated var of type interface{}
x := v.(tb)
x.b = 8.3
}
jorelli's answer is very good. I'm just going to show a few options. Your "true example" looks essentially like command dispatch, with command parameters specified with JSON. To start with simple code that does this,
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
)
func inHandler(action string, data []byte) {
arg := make(map[string]interface{})
json.Unmarshal(data, &arg)
switch action {
case "say":
fmt.Printf("You say, %q to %s\n", arg["msg"], arg["to"])
case "exit":
fmt.Println("Good bye")
}
}
func main() {
inHandler(`say`, []byte(`{"to":"Sonia","msg":"Please help me!"}`))
inHandler(`exit`, []byte(`{}`))
}
Your register new commands by adding cases to the switch statement. Yeah, didn't think you'd like that. So, adding your map and init() idea,
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
)
type jmap map[string]interface{}
var mActions = map[string]func(jmap){}
func init() {
mActions["say"] = func(arg jmap) {
fmt.Printf("You say, %q to %s\n", arg["msg"], arg["to"])
}
}
func init() {
mActions["exit"] = func(jmap) { fmt.Println("Good bye") }
}
func inHandler(action string, data []byte) {
args := make(jmap)
json.Unmarshal(data, &args)
mActions[action](args)
}
func main() {
inHandler(`say`, []byte(`{"to":"Sonia","msg":"Please help me!"}`))
inHandler(`exit`, []byte(`{}`))
}
Now if you wanted, you could put each of those init functions in a separate source file and new commands could be registered by creating a new source file with a new init function.
The rest of the program is simplified with some assumptions that the commands have flat argument lists that the JSON will always encode as an object. This allows you to dispense with separate Go struct definitions for each command. inHandler just creates the same type of object (a map) for all commands, unmarshals into it, and passes it to the command. If you wanted to handle a little more arbitrary JSON, you could unmarshal into an empty interface, and the functions would have to do some extra work to dig out the arguments. If that was too much work and you really wanted to unmarshal directly into a struct, then you arrive near jorelli's solution of making each command function unmarshal its own JSON.
start by defining a function type that does the thing you want:
type Producer func([]byte) interface{}
make a few of them:
func FooProducer(raw []byte) interface{} {
foo := new(Foo)
... // do something to foo
return foo
}
func BarProducter(raw []byte) interface{} {
bar := new(Bar)
... // do something to bar
return bar
}
stick them in a map:
likeThis := map[string]Producer{
"foo": FooProducer,
"bar": BarProducer,
}
and then just do one of these:
myVal := likeThis[someString](raw)
but you probably want to define some interface and make your producer something more like:
type Producer func([]byte) MyAwesomeInterface
since there's probably some common stuff you want to do with those things you're decoding. You also probably want to handle the case of a bad string input, like-a-this:
f, ok := likeThis[someString]
if !ok {
// return, break, panic... something, just get the hell away from here.
}
myVal := f(raw)
The whole notion of inspecting types is kinda cumbersome in Go. It's generally less work to just add new types than it is to try to do reflection gymnastics with the type system.

Generic function using an interface

Since I've a similar function for 2 different data types:
func GetStatus(value uint8) (string) {...}
func GetStatus(name string) (string) {...}
I would want to use a way more simple like:
func GetStatus(value interface{}) (string) {...}
Is possible to create a generic function using an interface?
The data type could be checked using reflect.Typeof(value)
Does what you want to do need the complexity and overhead of the reflect package? Have you considered a simple switch statement type switch?
package main
import (
"fmt"
)
func GetStatus(value interface{}) string {
var s string
switch v := value.(type) {
case uint8:
v %= 85
s = string(v + (' ' + 1))
case string:
s = v
default:
s = "error"
}
return s
}
func main() {
fmt.Println(GetStatus(uint8(2)), GetStatus("string"), GetStatus(float(42.0)))
}